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Issue No. 31

The View from Here

We used to like Mitt Romney for the obvious reasons (tall, great hair, the dog story). Now, thanks to Donald Trump, we have a better reason:…

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Small Talk

Murder in Fairfield County Trouble at home, trouble at the office. Fotis Dulos begins a serious affair. His wife, Jennifer, fears for her life

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Going Cold Turkey Can a millennial survive a week without a smartphone?

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The Girl in the Park The investigation into a Barnard student’s murder is haunted by the case of the Central Park Five

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Is This the End of the First Amendment? A startling court ruling makes it easier to jail insider traders—as well as whistleblowers and reporters

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Small Talk
“I just want to take a minute today to acknowledge all of the guys out there named Bret who are too shy to correct the people who think their name is Brad.”

Photographing the Other

Diane Arbus was American photography’s bravest detective. Born in 1923 and raised in leafy privilege (her father was the president of a department store on Fifth Avenue), the young Arbus spurned the path of bourgeois domesticity and propriety to patrol the outskirts and no-go areas of the demimonde, armed with only a 35-mm. Nikon and a fierce supply of inquisitive nerve. She haunted flea circuses, carnival sideshows, and strip clubs, made nighttime expeditions into Times Square and Coney Island (then at their most dangerous and squalid), and recorded life on the fly on New York City streets. READ ON

Diane Arbus’s Three Female Impersonators, N.Y.C., 1962, one of a series of her photographs to be collected in an exhibition opening on February 22 at Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario.

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Discover

Melania Diaries,
Part III

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Art

Play It Again, Alex Air Mail, MatchesFashion, and Lehmann Maupin kick off Frieze Los Angeles with supper and a screening of the latest short film by Alex Prager


Your Bamboo Toothbrush, Madame The Opéra Liège is the first hotel in France to eliminate single-use plastic

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Lost Worlds Retrieved Leopoldstadt, Tom Stoppard’s new (and perhaps last) play, is an act of historical excavation and personal reparation

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Style

Opera à la CNN

With opera being one of the most exhilarating forms of escapism the human race has yet devised, you might suppose it would offer respite from the grubby chicanery of contemporary politics, but since John Adams’s Nixon in China debuted, in 1987, such quaint assumptions no longer apply. While the Nixon gang—led by that perennial provocateur Peter Sellars, with Alice Goodman on board as librettist—went boldly where no one had gone before, these days traffic on the highway of so-called CNN opera is heavy. Just this month, fans have three specimens of the genre to choose from. READ ON

Baritone Eric Greene in rehearsal for Nixon in China, opening in Glasgow next week. Also on this month: Chodorkowski in Athens and the world premiere of Yeltsin in Texas, in Houston.

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Discover
Best

Goop Sex Meet Gwyneth’s 90-year-old “vagina whisperer”

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Must-See Events

Cape of No Hope Corruption and crime have killed Nelson Mandela’s dream and doomed the country’s future

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Small Talk
“Your three o’clock moved to two o’clock, your two o’clock moved to one o’clock, and your one o’clock said you’re fired.”

Madame de Drama

The glamour of the fin-de-siècle and the interwar years has the force of a doomed fairy tale, a mysterious energy that can be read, in retrospect, as deep denial of looming upheaval ahead. This glowing tension will be on view starting February 20 at the Neue Galerie, where a major retrospective on the Austrian photographer Madame d’Ora examines a career of 50 years, 1907 to 1957, through more than 100 photographs. READ ON

The largest-ever U.S. exhibition of photographer Madame d’Ora’s work, including her portrait of painter Tsuguharu Foujita, opens next week in New York.

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Discover
Small Talk
“He’s so co-dependent, I usually board him, but the conference is only three days. Just make sure to let him out from nine to five to do his business. Oh—and treats are in the liquor cabinet.”
Open Book

La Dolce Vitae Federico Fellini began recording his dreams around the time he was working on La Dolce Vita. On the centenary of his birth, diary sketches illustrate the filmmaker at his most personal

Books

The Man in the Red Coat

by Julian Barnes
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Weather

by Jenny Offill
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The Fire and the Darkness: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945

by Sinclair McKay
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Murder, They Wrote

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Bob Balaban “I pretend for a living. But in real life, I’m a reality junkie”: the actor recommends his favorite nonfiction books

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Small Talk
“As long as you don’t sign anything in blood you should be O.K.”

Flipping the Hitchcock Script The author of a new book on Joan Harrison re-writes the filmmaker’s prolific history to highlight the woman driving his success

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Fine Dining. And a Bed to Lie Down In Francis Mallmann takes over a village in Uruguay, to delicious effect

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Arcadia Mail Box uses vintage envelopes saved by the artist’s father. Robert Kushner’s work is in major museums, but riders on Manhattan’s Lexington Avenue subway line might be familiar with his floral mosaic in the 77th Street station (southbound platform).
Is Edited By

Graydon Carter and Alessandra Stanley

Deputy Editors

Chris Garrett Michael Hainey George Kalogerakis Nathan King

Design Director

Angela Panichi

Chief Technology Officer

John Tornow

Books Editor

Jim Kelly

Arts Intel Report Editor

Laura Jacobs

Style Editor

Ashley Baker

Articles Editor

Ash Carter

Senior Editor

Julia Vitale

Columnists

Cazzie David Emma Freud Walter Isaacson
Pico Iyer John Lahr James Wolcott

Photo Director

Ann Schneider

Cartoon Editor

Bob Mankoff

Music Supervisor

Randall Poster

Assistant Editors

Elena Clavarino Clementine Ford Alex Oliveira

International Editor

Isabelle Harvie-Watt

London Editor

Bridget Arsenault

Copy Editor

Adam Nadler

Photo Editor

Emine Gozde Sevim

Production Editor

H. Scott Jolley

Associate Editor

Elinor Schneider

Chief Operating Officer

Bill Keenan

Chief Marketing Officer

Emily Davis

Brand Partnerships

Anjali Lewis

Financial & Business Operations

Marc Leyer

Integrated Marketing Manager

Madeline Spates

Issue No. 31
February 15, 2020
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Issue No. 31
February 15, 2020

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